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Shiurim & Adult Education
THOUGHTS ON MATOT MASEI AND THE THREE WEEKS BY RABBI WILKINSON
We are in the three weeks of mourning the destruction of the holy Temples in Yerushalayim. When the first Temple was destroyed the people were behaving completely against the laws of the Torah. Yet at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple the people were engaged in Torah mitzvot, and acts of kindness, why was it destroyed?
According to the Gemara in Yoma it was because there was sinas chinum, unwarranted hatred. To teach you that sinas chinum, unwarranted hatred is equivalent to the three transgressions: Idol worship, immoral relations and bloodshed. (Yoma 9B)
Throughout the three weeks we are frequently lectured on sinas chinum and its destructiveness and experiencing the frustration of a generalized guilt with no diagnostic or curative tools. I would like to offer a working definition of sinas chinum and a few practical exercises to at least begin to mitigate that lethal problem.
I saw a commentary by Rabbi S Matisyahu Solomon ztl which gives a description of sinas chinam to which I could relate. He gave a brutal example to illustrate the point. I apologise for spelling it out for educational purposes: A little boy in class is caught by his teacher playing with something in his desk. The teacher confiscates the item and warns him to not play around and rather pay attention. It happens again and again and then the teacher (it’s only a wild example to make a point) cuts off the boy’s arm. Everyone is mortified and the world comes down on this teacher’s head and rightfully so. When asked why he did it, he simply responds, “He was playing with something in his desk.” Yes, but that is no justification for mutilating him permanently like that.
Rabbi Solomon explains that we may have a legitimate claim against another. He reversed and dented my car. The damage is £350. He never pays. He owes me that money. However, that does not give me license to hate him altogether and those in his family and people with that first name and last name and others who dress or talk like him or live in his neighbourhood, and to refuse to make Shidduchim with anyone that reminds me remotely of him. Any residual resentment above the claim of £350 is chinam, unwarranted. Yet, that is what can happen as we allow a monetary claim to fester in the form of hatred and spread like a terrible infection.
That is sinas chinam. To limit its impact, we need to think surgically and reduce the problems we have with others to the smallest possible part, and to remove a splinter with a needle and not a flamethrower.
The Chofetz Chaim reminds us in his introduction to his Sefer Chofetz Chaim that the length of our exile is very much due to this unresolved and persistent problem of sinas chinam, unwarranted hatred.
What can we do about it? He explains why and how shmiras haloshon, guarding one’s tongue can be the beginning of a cure. Everything is based on the verse from Tehillim, “Mi HaIsh HaChofetz Chaim” – “Who is the person who desires life, to see good? Guard your tongue from bad and your lips from speaking deceitfully. Turn from bad and do good, seek peace and run after it!”
Again, why is speech a central discipline? The Chofetz Chaim explains that if one is careful not to harm another with even words then he will certainly be less likely to harm others bodily or materially. That is how proper speech can curb and cure action and behaviour.
Let’s give an example of how it impacts how we think and feel about others. There is an old joke that helps explain the idea: A man walks into a shop and sees pallets and pallets with bags of something piled up to the ceiling in every corner of the shop. He asks the shop owner, “What is all this? Potatoes?” The shop owner tells him, “It salt! It’s all salt!” The visitor exclaims, “You must sell a lot of salt!” The shop owner replies, “Me? I don’t sell any salt, but that salt salesman, he sells a lot of salt!”
That is ridiculous. Why would a retailer continue to stock up on an item he does not sell. So too, if the mouth stops speaking loshon hora then the mind will gradually cease to produce and import negative thoughts and feelings about others. They will naturally begin to learn to love days, and to see good in others.
Wishing you Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov.
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